Unbroken

Unbroken was an interesting read for me. I did enjoy the book, believe me. It took me a bit longer than most of my friends to finish the book within my busy summer schedule, but I still did finish it as fast as I could. Alright, that's partially a lie. I finished as fast as I could with all the Netflix breaks in between. I mean, come on... this is my summer vacation. Spending hours on Netflix is basically a requirement. Anywho, I'm going off on a tangent here.
I am not a fan of the layout of the book itself, but I am a fan of the story and how it is told. The concept of longer pages with smaller fonts is a turn off for me, but it was easy to overlook with such a captivating story. Louie Zamperini is truly an inspirational being. This was the book that I probably annotated the most out of the three, most likely due to its scrupulous detail. I am utterly flabbergasted by the numerous situations times that Louie was actually faced with death. This man was a living miracle. Please tell me how many times that you actually hear about a guy that passes out while drowning in deep ocean water somehow wakes back up and survives the 800 foot swim back to the surface while being tangled in plane wires. Exactly, you can't say because it simply doesn't occur on a day to day basis. Or ever, really.  But somehow Louis Zamperini handled it and I give him full creds. I mean, if a plane crash survivor can pass out, drown and wake up with oxygen, I definitely should be able to run that one minute jog in gym effortlessly, yet I still complain about it every single day.
I'm not one to critique much, but there's a threshold for all things. Once you pass that threshold, it's just way too much. That's how I felt about all that detail. I love detail, I love imagery, I love description... but remember, thresholds. There was way too much unnecessary detail going on in this book. Like it started to bore me sometimes. I wanted to enjoy my summer reading, I wanted to vibe with the text, but how am I supposed to do that when I'm bored? I simply can't, and I put the book down. Things like that are what make me unmotivated to finish my summer reading. I pushed through it all, but it took much longer than it should have. I mean, at least I still enjoyed the story.
I think that the will to live is what allowed Zamperini to be able to live through such harsh conditions. On page 182, he describes himself as "a dead body breathing". Can we just take a moment to understand how significant this is? He was straight up dead. Long past starvation, his organs are probably on their last legs. He's looking pretty sickly right about now. So many people surrounding him are dying just the same, losing their sanity in the process as well. But his internal will to live, never giving up and always pushing through got him to live to be 97. That's a favorable quality and probably something everyone should think about. If you were looking for a call to action, here it is: LIVE! LOVE LIFE!! If you're strong enough, if you live enough, you'll be just like legendary Louie. #goals